Aliens APC

ABOUT:
This was my first attempt at designing and building from scratch. I am a huge fan of James Cameron’s Aliens and wanted to build the APC they drove. I have always been very impressed with the artistic design in the movie. It’s familiar enough to feel real, yet futuristic enough to also be iconic. The APC in particular has a very foreboding presence. I found several builds online, but most of them were not accurate and none featured an interior.

BUILD:
The build proved to be far more problematic than first anticipated. The set for the interior was separate from the actually APC and was designed larger than the outside to accommodate the film equipment and to give the actors room to act. Luckily, the 1/16th scale I used allowed me to use some perspective tricks to mask the discrepancies. I also had to kind of guess what the front left wall looked like, since we never get a good look at it and it’s never focused to the frame. Ultimately, I decided that was where they housed the guns. I also managed to find ways to make all the doors and turrets move. The only thing I am not happy with is I made the wheels a little too large and the APC sits too far off the ground because of this. Of course that might have kept Ripley from breaking the transaxle in the movie.